Tag: Dafydd Wigley

In a few days time Neil McEvoy, the Assembly Member for the South Wales Central region, is up before the beak, in the form of Sir Roderick Evans, the Standards Commissioner. The charge is that McEvoy used equipment the Assembly had provided for constituency work for party political purposes.

The story that I’m about to relate is complicated, compiled from a number of sources, but an internal consistency becomes evident as interwoven threads emerge. Also certain attitudes I have written about before.

One of those threads is that there are people across the political spectrum who wish that boat-rocking Neil McEvoy would just go away . . . but if he won’t do the decent thing with a 37 bus then they’ll have to do it themselves.

And this hostility seems to transcend party divides, uniting those who huff and puff, play silly games, and in reality do nothing but oversee the continuing decline of Wales.

But let us start at the beginning.

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THE ACCUSED

Neil McEvoy is one of the most easily recognised politicians in the Assembly. He’s certainly popular with people who take no more than a passing interest in politics, and that’s because he is seen to stick it to the man. Regularly. God knows Wales doesn’t have many other politicians doing this.

His background is Arab-Irish-English, just the sort of candidate Plaid Cymru has been looking for to make the breakthrough in Cardiff, or so you might have thought. And his arrival in Plaid was followed by something of a breakthrough.

Before McEvoy joined the party in 2003 Plaid Cymru had just one seat in Cardiff (Creigiau) and little chance of success anywhere else. Yet from 2008 to 2012 Plaid Cymru – with seven seats – was in a ruling coalition with the Liberal Democrats and Neil McEvoy served as deputy council leader.

By the council elections of 2017 Neil McEvoy and the two other Plaid candidates for the Fairwater ward were elected with the biggest Plaid vote in any ward in Wales, while in the wider Cardiff West constituency Plaid came second to Labour in every other ward, winning the average popular vote.

The picture is equally impressive on the national stage.

In 2016 Neil McEvoy was elected Assembly Member for the South Wales Central region. He also stood for the Cardiff West constituency and almost doubled the Plaid Cymru vote from his own showing in 2011.

In fact, McEvoy came close to sparing us the embarrassment of Mark Drakeford as first minister. If the current trend continues then there’s a strong chance that McEvoy will beat Drakeford in the 2021 election.

Though of course some will argue that this growth in support would have happened without Neil McEvoy.

In addition to the bare numbers provided by elections Neil McEvoy has shaken things up in other ways:

He was the first person in UK politics to use Facebook videos. He was mocked for doing so, now it’s the norm.

This helps explain why those who believe devolution is nothing but a system that allows local ‘friendlies’ to manage Wales on England’s behalf – without engaging the excitable natives – regard Neil McEvoy as dangerous, and that’s why they’ll go to any lengths to damage him.

For example, back in March 2017, at the instigation of the Labour Party and its third sector cronies Plaid Cymru suspended Neil McEvoy on a trumped up charge of ‘bullying’. (In reality, he was standing up to City Hall for a constituent.)

The picture below shows former Labour councillor Paul Mitchell holding a copy of the local newspaper at a gathering of Labourites celebrating McEvoy’s misfortune. (Interesting that they felt the need to hide behind curtains that were the height of fashion in 1960s East Germany.)

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If every picture tells a story then the message from this one is, never underestimate how much the Labour Party hates Neil McEvoy, and the lengths they’ll go to to destroy him. Equally, never forget how eager Plaid Cymru is to appease the English Labour Party in Wales.

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THE ACCUSER

Michael Deem is not a name familiar to many of you, but he’s central to this story, for it was Deem who made the complaint to the Standards Commissioner.

What know we of Mr Deem?

Well, he seems to have emerged from the gloom in 2015, saying he was interested in what Plaid Cymru was doing and wanted to be part of it, and was welcomed into the fold. In July 2016 he became manager of Neil McEvoy’s Cardiff West constituency office.

His rise within the party continued and after prime minister May called an election for June 2017 in the hope of boosting her majority he was hurriedly adopted as the Cardiff West candidate. Deem and Plaid Cymru suffered a bad defeat, coming a poor third, with less than 10 per cent of the vote.

Making enquiries into Michael Deem proved interesting. For it’s not often I get to write about an Asda selling champion. According to his Linkedin profile he’s still working for Asda, but I’m told he’s now working for HMRC, so he appears to have abandoned Linkedin.

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Fortunately, some photographs exist of Michael Deem during his Asda days. He was something of a flag-waver. Of course, this can’t be held against him, he probably had no choice in the matter . . . but he still seems very enthusiastic.

The montage below contains two photos of him waving the flag for Asda and Britain, another shows him outside Buckingham Palace, while the fourth has him waving that flag again, but this time there seems to be no Asda connection, it looks like his own choice. Where is he?

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As I’ve said, he was office manager for Neil McEvoy – and a disaster in the job. One of his primary duties was dealing with constituents’ casework, which he claimed to be doing but rarely did. This had consequences, such as one constituent losing out on his pension. There were dozens of other complaints.

And of course, this ‘negligence’ (if such it was) reflected badly on Neil McEvoy.

In addition to neglecting his duties he enjoyed playing the petty tyrant, especially towards a young female employee. Even throwing things at her! This was witnessed and reported by a member of the public.

Then there were the mood swings. And the debts Deem ran up that his employer, Neil McEvoy, had to pay out of his own pocket. And let’s not forget the time he was reported to the Information Commissioner for copying and sharing highly confidential information. There were unauthorised holidays . . .

After being suspended in July 2017 Deem joined the trade union Unite which I have described before as the Labour Party by another name. It wasn’t long before the workings of Plaid Cymru’s Cardiff West constituency office were being discussed in Labour circles.

After a protracted process Deem was eventually sacked early in 2018. His appeal was dismissed by the Assembly’s Legal Service. He then threatened McEvoy with an Employment Tribunal unless he (Deem) was paid £8,000. McEvoy told Deem – via ACAS – that he was prepared to go to a Tribunal. That was the end of the matter and Unite withdrew its support.

By August 2018 Deem was using his Facebook page to appeal for advice. Now what I find interesting about this appeal is Deem’s belief that he’s going to be a UK media sensation for putting the boot into McEvoy! Is it all being done for publicity?

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Or is he just deluded, for Michael Deem is a young man with a high opinion of himself, and a bully when he can get away with it?

For while he was useless at his job he was good at promoting himself. This explains being selected for Cardiff West in the 2017 Westminster election. In that campaign he refused all advice from Neil McEvoy who knew the constituency so well and he came a very poor third. Having pinned his hopes on becoming an MP his attitude towards Neil McEvoy and the constituency office deteriorated even further.

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Michael Deem effectively did himself out of a job, but he’s never going to accept that. What’s more, given that his dispute is with Neil McEvoy there will be no shortage of people encouraging him to believe that he’s the latest victim of an ogre.

If the Standards Commissioner rejects Deem’s complaint we can probably expect McEvoy’s enemies in Plaid Cymru to find some old biddy who’ll claim she was elbowed in the face by Neil McEvoy when they were reaching for the parsnips in Tesco. Or maybe some child will sob to BBC Wales cameras that Neil McEvoy ran over ‘Freddy’, his pet cockroach, while speeding through Splott in his (almost certainly uninsured) car.

What do you mean, I’m being ridiculous? Check out the things that have been said about Neil McEvoy by Leanne Wood and her cronies, by the Labour Party, by Deryn, by the harridans of the third sector. Also, what they’ve persuaded others to say. And they’re still at it!

But the relationship was not always so fraught.

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THE MCEVOY ENIGMA

When Neil McEvoy was simply a Cardiff councillor and an aspiring Assembly Member he could be encouraged just like any other Plaid candidate. But when he was elected to the Assembly in 2016, and more importantly when he started making waves, then he became a danger.

That’s because there are too many in Plaid Cymru with a bipolar view of politics. On the one hand they see the ‘progressives’ of the left (Plaid, Labour, Greens), while on the other hand are arrayed the forces of reaction (Tories, Ukip, Beelzebub and me). The Welsh dimension does not intrude into this paradigm.

Guided by this alignment Plaid Cymru see it as their duty to link with Labour and Greens (both very English parties) to fight the enemy in some ideological precursor to Armageddon.

This makes Neil McEvoy, a charismatic and confrontational politician, doing the best for his constituents and his country, a threat that has to be dealt with. For in addition to the eternal struggle against the forces of darkness there are many cushy jobs in the third sector and elsewhere to consider, sinecures in revivified quangos, peerages even; plus lucrative contracts within the gift of the ‘Welsh’ and UK governments. All these are dependent on Plaid Cymru not making waves.

It has been relatively easy for Plaid Cymru to isolate Neil McEvoy because he doesn’t belong to any of the cliques making up the party. Which I would loosely define as the cultural-linguistic wing, the environmentalist wing, and the niche socialist wing.

These classifications are not mutually exclusive, of course, but no matter how much they may overlap the fact remains that Neil McEvoy fits into none of them. He is just a Cardiff boy who knows his city and its people better than anyone who’s moved to Cardiff from Ceredigion or Gwynedd.

He also knows what’s wrong with Cardiff, and with Wales . . . and who’s to blame. But wearing bipolar lenses makes Plaid Cymru think Labour is blameless.

Picture courtesy of BBC Wales, click to enlarge

For most of the half century and more that I’ve been observing Plaid Cymru the cry has been, ‘How can we appeal to the South?’ It could now be argued that the Valleys are winnable, which leaves the cities of the coast.

Where Neil McEvoy has made the breakthrough in appealing to the natives of Kerdiff (bless ’em!). For he is one of their own and so they listen to him, and they like what they hear, so they vote for him.

Plaid Cymru should be delighted, but no; for the reasons I’ve already given, his popular appeal unsettles the party hierarchy . . . and of course it threatens the re-election of first minister Mark Drakeford.

Which explains why the attacks from Leanne Wood’s disciples continue. Here’s a truly bizarre one that came out of the blue on Thursday from Cyffin Thomas and others. Thomas “writes monthly-ish articles for the Lampeter Grapevine“.

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What provoked this? What the hell were they trying to say to the first AM of colour born in Wales? Does being gay and socialist give you licence to say anything? Can you imagine the outcry from my many ‘progressive’ admirers if I’d said something like that? Or if I’d used black images?

We’re dealing with hypocrites here. Hypocrites who’ve been allowed to hide behind their rainbow flags, or their gender, or what they imagine to be the moral superiority bestowed by ‘socialism’, and they’ve got away with lies and insults for too long.

With his period of expulsion drawing to a close some new excuse for excluding Neil McEvoy had to be found. And that’s all you need to know about this allegation by Michael Deem. A charge levelled by a dismissed employee who is almost certainly being egged on by others.

In essence, the ‘charge’ is that a former Plaid Cymru AM used his office for the benefit of . . . Plaid Cymru! The complaint made by a Plaid Cymru member.

Nobody disputes that Neil McEvoy works hard for his constituents, so it seems bloody strange to me that the former office manager would complain about the office he himself was supposed to be running.

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WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

However we look at it, this case reflects badly on Plaid Cymru, yet it doesn’t surprise me one bit.

For as I’ve told you before, I have long believed that there is an element within Plaid Cymru determined to scupper any threat of real success. A grouping that regards the prospect of independence with horror.

Those I’m referring to want Plaid Cymru to:

ignore Welsh issues – ‘ugly nationalism’ – or else frame them in a British or global context

maintain a level of support just enough to inhibit the emergence of a true nationalist party

Cast your mind back to the removal of Dafydd Wigley in 2000. He had just led Plaid Cymru to its greatest ever success in the first Assembly elections of 1999. But before the cheering had died down elements within Plaid Cymru were working to remove their party’s greatest electoral asset . . . and to replace him with Ieuan Wyn Jones!

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The excuse used was Wigley’s heart condition, and his general health. Nineteen years later he’s fit and well, leading an active life and regularly attending the House of Lords.

I’m not saying that Neil McEvoy is as important to Plaid Cymru’s electoral success as Dafydd Wigley, but there is a parallel to be drawn.

I suggest that because Plaid Cymru prefers corporate blandness to individual sparkle; and craves the kind of ‘respectability’ it believes is only achieved by not offending authority. Given the mess Wales is in, such an approach is little more than self-serving defeatism.

This is why, when Neil McEvoy was elected to the Assembly, I wrote in Assembly Elections 2016: Hopes and Ashes: “I just hope that the Plaid establishment doesn’t ‘get to’ him. Plaid Cymru needs more Neil McEvoys and fewer sons of the manse and masters of cynghanedd, and fewer entryists using the party to promote socialist, environmentalist and other agendas.”

The Plaid establishment clearly did ‘get to’ Neil McEvoy, but he resisted, and when he wouldn’t bend to their will they sought to attack him at every opportunity. Just ask yourself – whose interest is being served by Plaid Cymru and its nefarious allies continually undermining such an electoral asset?

Worked it out yet?

If there’s a young firebrand out there wanting to give the system a kick in the nuts, then Uncle Jac’s advice would be: ‘Don’t waste your time with a compromised establishment party that will only stab you in the back if you look like achieving anything. Try your luck with Ein Gwlad’.

I’m even tempted to offer the same advice to Neil McEvoy. But I suspect he’s more loyal to Plaid Cymru than certain elements of Plaid Cymru are to him, or the party.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 07.01.2019: Soon after posting this article I received an e-mail notification of a comment to my Facebook page. Unfortunately, the comment – in response to Delaney M Christian – had been pulled before I could see it.

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Llinos Price is one of those to whom I referred in the article, a woman dangerously obsessed with Neil McEvoy and determined to damage him. Last year she started a petition against him.

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When she’s not sticking pins into her voodoo doll of Neil McEvoy her day job appears to be with the Woodland Trust. That is the same Woodland Trust involved with George Monbiot and his gang, using the management team in Cardiff docks to take money off Welsh farmers and hand it to a replacement population in the form of ‘re-wilders’ and other would-be colonists involved in the Summit to Sea scam.

It never ceases to amaze me how many of the prissy and self-regarding devolution elite, so profuse in their loyalties to Wales, seem to fall in with the ugliest and most blatantly colonialist organisations and projects. Maybe ethnic cleansing is now ‘progressive’.

They really do need to step back from the Bay Bubble and take a long hard look at where Wales is headed.

Most of you will be aware that after a protracted and amateurish ‘process’ Plaid Cymru has now expelled Neil McEvoy from its Assembly group. This will have surprised absolutely no one. But what is it all about, what’s the real story?

From speaking with Neil McEvoy and others, and from my own research, this is my interpretation of an affair that reflects badly on devolution, also on Plaid Cymru, the Labour Party, and the third sector, while telling us much about the anti-democratic manoeuvrings and poisonous environment of Cardiff Bay.

The biggest problem I found in researching this piece – something I’ve been doing, off and on, for months – was not the scarcity of evidence but the overwhelming amount of it. Which meant that I had to stick to the straight and narrow without being detoured by personal animosities and other distractions.

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IN THE BEGINNING

I don’t think we need to go back any further than November 2011 to find the time when Neil McEvoy made himself a host of powerful enemies, people who have pursued him ever since, and would now appear to have him down . . . though I wouldn’t bet on it.

What he did with a Facebook post and tweet about men being denied access to their children, and his criticism of Welsh Women’s Aid – run then by Labour’s Paula Hardy and today still packed with party members including the former MP for Swansea East, Siân James – was to threaten a system that relied on unquestioning acceptance of certain dicta, in this case – ‘All men are bastards, and all women are victims’.

This particular dictum wrings an unquestioning acceptance out of politicians and others which is then used to cultivate an ever-growing number of third sector bodies – as new ‘niches’ are found to exploit – with hundreds of crony jobs and all paid for from the public purse. And who would dare argue – for aren’t they ‘helping vulnerable women’.

Though it’s worth remembering that McEvoy was not without support from the very same quarter where most wanted him lynched, as this piece reminds us. It’s about Erin Pizzey, who had founded the UK’s first women’s refuge in London, in 1971.

This woman has been a doyenne of the women’s rights movement since the term ‘battered wives’ was coined and has expressed strong views on the narrow interpretation that only women can be victims of domestic violence. She has also been very critical of what she terms ‘aggressive feminism’.

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Predictably, this has made Pizzey unpopular with those who use their gender as a weapon in securing personal advancement, often in the absence of ability or qualifications. And especially with those who view someone else’s domestic abuse as a good career move for them.

Following the self-interested attacks from various third sector bodies back in 2011 the Labour Party predictably came down on a Plaid Cymru politician. But it didn’t end there, because McEvoy was suspended by his own party.

Here we see the first inkling of something beneath the surface suggesting that the political differences we are asked to believe in, the Punch and Judy shows of electioneering and political debate, may be just a sham.

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THE POLITICS OF IT 1

Neil McEvoy was first elected as a Labour councillor for the Riverside ward on Cardiff city council in 1999, becoming vice-chair of the Labour group. In 2003 he left to join Plaid Cymru and lost his seat in the 2004 elections.

In 2008 he was back on the council, representing the Fairwater ward. With Plaid now running the council in coalition with the Lib Dems he served as deputy council leader from 2008 – 2012. Although Labour returned to power in 2012 McEvoy retained his Fairwater seat, coming top out of 13 candidates with 16% of the total vote.

Neil McEvoy entered the Assembly in 2016 by the regional route, becoming an AM for South Wales Central. Although the regional vote is difficult to interpret, few doubt that Plaid’s good showing was due to McEvoy being on the regional list.

Roll on to 2017 and in defending his Fairwater seat Neil McEvoy took Plaid Cymru to previously unscaled heights and a humiliating defeat for Labour. He upped his percentage of the vote to 20%, with the leading Labour candidate trailing way behind on 9%.

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What makes this result so impressive is that just before the council elections – in March, in fact – a Cardiff Council (i.e. Labour) tribunal found that a throwaway remark McEvoy had made to a council official amounted to ‘bullying’.

Plaid Cymru joined in by suspending him from the Plaid Cymru Assembly group. Plaid chairman Alun Ffred Jones, thought that the ludicrous charge was “serious because it involves bullying”. (Alun Ffred is one of those men so devoid of animation that watching him I think back to the old Soviet Union and the undead politburo members atop Lenin’s tomb. A fur hat and a few snowflakes would complete that rather unsettling image.)

The timing and co-ordination of these attacks was of course coincidental.

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THE POLITICS OF IT 2

Were he or she reading this then I’m sure that the foreign correspondent of Maritza Plovdiv would be thinking (in Bulgarian) ‘Wow! at last Plaid Cymru has a politician who can stick it to the Labour Party, take them on and beat them on their own turf. Let the good times roll!’

In truth, since Neil McEvoy arrived in the Assembly, Plaid Cymru’s faint-hearts have behaved as if they’d been handed a bomb. For a number of reasons.

To begin with, I don’t think they understand McEvoy. For while Plaid may have many members in Cardiff nowadays, and there may be a thriving Welsh language scene in the city, this is largely due to the population movement that has enfeebled our rural areas.

But Neil McEvoy didn’t move down from Pwllheli or up from Crymych, he’s Kerdiff through and through, with his Irish/Yemeni/English/Welsh background. And this is his strength, for he appeals to Cardiff voters who might not engage with Carys or Rhodri.

Nor did he come to Plaid by any of the usual routes. By which I mean, he certainly hasn’t come from the language movement, he isn’t an environmentalist or a hard leftie infiltrator, nor is he a professional politician who started out as a party worker or spad, and he certainly didn’t emerge from the third sector.

So in many ways, Neil McEvoy is a one-off, an enigma; and for all their talk of ‘the people’, when presented with a genuine man of the people Plaid Cymru’s upper echelons are horrified.

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That’s because Neil McEvoy – like most of us reading this – realises that the real enemy in Wales is the Labour Party, not the Conservatives. And so he attacks the Labour Party and its corrupt system again and again. This is why Plaid Cymru is on the verge of expelling him from the party.

It is no exaggeration to make a comparison with the palace coup against Dafydd Wigley in 2000, for once again Plaid Cymru is thinking of getting rid of its most popular politician and its greatest electoral asset.

And once again, the move may be prompted by influences external to the party.

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ALL PROGRESSIVES TOGETHER

In the collective mindset of the Plaid Cymru leadership and hierarchy being ‘progressive’ – and/or being viewed by others as ‘progressive’ – is more important than doing what’s best for Wales. Posturing.

Giving the finger to the US president, saving the planet, arguing that only fascists and racists want us to leave the EU, supporting every -ism that rolls off the left-liberal production line, and getting good coverage in the Guardian, are much more important than serving Wales.

Despite professing love for, and faith in, ‘the people’, progressives don’t really trust hoi polloi to do what’s best (especially since Brexit, Trump, and a host of other recent disappointments). Far better that a progressive elite should run things in the best interests of the untutored mob.

This has given Wales the kind of paternalistic statism we have always known from Labour, with Plaid Cymru latching on to Labour’s coat-tails in recent decades. Industry and commerce are inimical to this model because companies and even individual entrepreneurs cannot be easily controlled, and so both Labour and Plaid Cymru – despite regular protestations to the contrary – are anti-business.

There was a time when Labour could exercise this control through the workforces of major industries and trade unions, but with the passing of the traditional working class it has tried to maintain its hold by breaking society down into ethnic, sexual and other ‘deprived’ or ‘oppressed’ groups – all of which must be defended!

This helps explain the rise of the third sector which, especially in Wales, now fills the role vacated by the trade unions as Labour support troops. Plaid Cymru dutifully goes along with this . . . on condition that enough of its people get a slice of the third sector pie.

It’s no surprise then that one of the complainants against Neil McEvoy is Frances Beecher of homelessness company Llamau (of which I have writ many times). Her complaints are laughable, and tell us how contrived this witch-hunt is, and who’s behind it.

FRANCES BEECHER, Courtesy of WalesOnline, click to enlarge

For example, “he was ‘bullish, difficult and aggressive’ at the charity’s public election hustings in May 20”, we are told. Er, so a politician spoke up at a public meeting! God Almighty – let’s get the bastard!

This ‘social worker politics’ ensures that Wales remains poor, for which Labour and Plaid Cymru blame the Tories (even when they aren’t in power), and the poverty allows the Tories to point to Wales and use it as a warning of what happens if you vote Labour.

So everybody wins – except Wales.

Let’s also remember that relying on more money from the UK government proves that Plaid Cymru doesn’t want independence. Dependent devolution with few responsibilities and plenty of perks is far more amenable.

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‘STRONG WOMEN’

Of all the -isms Plaid Cymru has adopted over recent decades none is currently more pernicious and self-harming than the aggressive and intolerant form of feminism now stalking Cardiff Bay.

It manifests itself in a number of ways, and it transcends party boundaries to the advantage of Labour.

In November 2015 I wrote this mixed-bag post, and you should scroll down to the section ‘Sophie Howe, more Labour cronyism’. Howe, a Labour time-server, had been deputy PCC for South Wales to Alun Michael, the former Labour MP, then a new post was created for her, that of Future Generations Commissioner.

Neil McEvoy (who I referred to in the piece as “a rising star within Plaid Cymru”), criticised the appointment for what it was – Labour cronyism. Others in Plaid Cymru saw it differently, like then AM Jocelyn Davies.

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It was the Jocelyn Davies view that prevailed in Plaid Cymru and provided me with an insight into certain attitudes that allowed gender and perceptions of solidarity to over-ride the political differences most of us imagined existed. The political differences we were asked to vote for at election times.

With the death of Carl Sargeant and other recent developments we now know that things are even worse than justifying political cronyism for no better reason than that the appointee is “a strong woman”.

The agenda takes many forms. For example, there is currently a petition calling for Neil McEvoy not to be reinstated to the Plaid Cymru Assembly group. It is addressed to party leader Leanne Wood, but is it her decision alone?

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Even though it claims to be the work of ‘Concerned Welsh Women’ it’s pulling in signatures from around the world, so obviously the petition has been widely publicised in feminist circles and the Labour Party.

The word on the street is that this petition was started by another ‘strong woman’, in the form of Helen Mary Jones, sometime AM for Llanelli. She of course denies it. Though I find it interesting how many times her rebuttal reduces the whole business to a men versus women issue.

At one point she refers to Neil McEvoy as “Neil McAvoy”. Being unable to even get his name right might suggest he’s almost incidental to something bigger.

Whether Helen Mary Jones did start the petition or not she told a friend of mine once, “I have more friends in the Labour Party than in Plaid Cymru”. Make of that what you will.

Helen Mary Jones was AM for Llanelli. The seat where the great rugby coach Carwyn James once stood, and where Plaid Cymru had one of its strongest branches . . . until the general election of 2017, when the candidate selected by the local party was turfed out to make way for a woman candidate imposed by Cardiff HQ.

The late Carl Sargeant complained about being bullied from within the office of Labour leader and First Minister Carwyn Jones in 2014. The finger points at former television journalist Jo Kiernan, who left at the end of 2015. This report of her departure makes it clear she was loathed by many people even in her own party.

When she left the office of the First Minister Jo Kiernan went to lobbying firm Deryn, from where the bullying and undermining of Carl Sargeant continued. The ‘Welsh’ media is reluctant to say this, so let us be thankful for Guido Fawkes. Jo Kiernan also served as a consultant to Llamau.

Though whether the continued bullying came from Kiernan alone will perhaps be established in coming months. It may be significant that Jo Kiernan’s Twitter account went silent around the time of Carl Sargeant’s death, but the tweets preserved suggest she too is ‘a strong woman’.

If we look to the six leading players at Deryn we see four with Labour backgrounds, Cathy Owens, Huw Roberts, Jo Kiernan and Vicki Evans, and two from Plaid Cymru, Nerys Evans and Elin Llŷr.

Courtesy of WalesOnline, click to enlarge

In July 2016 Neil McEvoy drew attention to what he, and many others, considered to be a conflict of interest involving Nerys Evans. He also called for a register of lobbyists. Which would have seen his card marked, yet again.

Early in 2017 Neil McEvoy further endeared himself to Deryn by revealing that Ofcom’s Welsh operation had awarded a contract to Deryn without any tendering process, and this looked bad seeing as two Deryn directors – Nerys Evans and Huw Roberts – sat on the Ofcom Wales board.

These third world shenanigans feed into the continuum, Labour/Plaid Cymru-lobbyists-third sector. With people, overwhelmingly women, floating between the different parts as if they were one. Though of course the continuum is restricted to Labour and Plaid Cymru personnel.

Which inevitably results in political differences blurring, or disappearing altogether. The priorities are influencing political decisions (often for personal gain) and milking the public purse. And God help anybody, like Neil McEvoy, who becomes aware of this corruption and starts blowing the whistle.

This explains why Plaid Cymru is so anaemic, so reluctant to confront Labour. It could even be that through channels like Deryn Labour is to some extent controlling Plaid Cymru. Certainly Nerys Evans is a very close friend of Leanne Wood.

One thing’s for sure, when it comes to election times, and we are asked to choose between Labour and Plaid Cymru, there is no choice, they’re one and the same; combining to keep Wales poor so they get votes by blaming the Tories while their friends in the third sector feather their nests from exploiting our deprivation. (And, where necessary, importing more!)

Neil McEvoy knows this. Neil McEvoy wants to expose this. And it’s the reason Neil McEvoy is now being targeted: Discredit the messenger and hope that the message dies with his political career. But it won’t work. Too many people are waking up to the incestuous relationships and the wider corruption down Cardiff Bay.

Neil McEvoy will emerge from this stronger and more popular, but the careers of many of his detractors will suffer, and I’ll enjoy writing about it. Because you’ve brought it on yourselves!

While I was away I picked up a copy of the Evening Post, a Swansea institution that has gone downhill in recent years. The ‘paper I knew long ago used to bring out its first edition around midday, with further editions up to and including the ‘Final’ or ‘Late Night Final’. You knew which edition it was by the number of windows filled in on the Mumbles lighthouse image at the top right of the front page. One window filled for the first edition . . .

Then of course there was the Sporting Post on Saturday night, with young boys racing from pub to pub to sell their allotted copies. In competition with them were the ladies of the Sally Ann with bundles of War Cry, and occasionally, yours truly with a band of Plaidistas, offloading Welsh Nation. The competition was fierce! (Though unlike the paper-sellers and the bonneted ladies I could – and did – partake of liquid refreshment to keep me going.)

In those days, long before the internet, before pubs had wall to wall television, but after bookies became legal in 1960, the pubs downtown seemed to be filled in the afternoons with men reading newspapers, men of studious mien, a pencil in one hand and often a half-smoked fag behind an ear. The real professionals had a fag behind one ear and a spare pencil behind the other.

I am of course referring now to aficionados of the turf, the sport of kings . . . and of layabouts dreaming of easy money. For members of the latter group to know which nag had won the 2:30 at Doncaster required the ‘Stop Press’ entry on latest edition of the Post, and it was quite common to see breathless groups of men waiting at the Post‘s various delivery points in anticipation of sudden wealth. All gone.

In recent years, printing was moved out of the city, the Evening Post became a morning paper, and what had once been the Welsh daily with the largest circulation lost its crown to the Daily Post. Then, in what might prove to be the coup de grace the Post was taken over by Trinity Mirror, and is now controlled from Cardiff, its online presence merged with Llais y Sais and the Echo in WalesOnline.

If further proof was needed of the Post‘s downward slide it came when I saw that Julian Ruck now has a weekly column. Here’s his effort from the 7th. (Click to enlarge.)

Before considering what he wrote let’s look at how he’s described by the Post: “Julian Ruck is a novelist, broadcaster, political commentator and guest public speaker”.

His ‘novels’ are excruciating pot-boilers that he publishes himself but nobody buys. “Broadcaster”? Mmm, has anyone seen or heard him ‘broadcast’ – or have I been lucky? “Political Commentator”; well, I’m a political commentator, everyone who expresses a political opinion is a political commentator, the term means nothing. “Guest public speaker” is a curious phrase, why not just ‘public speaker’? I suppose it’s trying to say that he gets invited to places. (Twice?)

As for what he has to say, well, here’s a sample, “Dear me, this Welsh bit is getting a bit tedious isn’t it?” The senior language of this island, the language spoken in London when the English were still Germans, is reduced to “this Welsh bit”. What a twat!

Later he describes Welsh as “a foreign tongue”, which is not only offensive but also inaccurate. Because you see, Ruck, it wouldn’t matter if no one spoke Welsh – it would still be the national language of Wales. That’s because it is unique to Wales, it is the ancestral language of the Welsh, and for most of our history it defined Welsh nationality. English may now be the majority language of Wales, but it can never be the national language.

From Amazon, where his books can be bought for £0.01

It would be easy to dismiss Ruck as a pompous little prick, a snob, but I feel rather sorry for him. He’s bitter because he’s been denied the success he feels he deserves. His search for a scapegoat has led him to a conspiracy of Welsh speakers who produce dastardly schemes to deny us the wit and wisdom of Julian Ruck. This leads to him hating the Welsh language itself and all those who speak it . . . maybe he thinks all Welsh speakers are in on the conspiracy.

Face it, Ruck, you’re a crap writer and a mercenary bigot, an opinionated nobody. But to give your attacks some credibility you have to be bigged up into a popular writer, someone whose opinion matters.

Though it says a lot about modern Wales that it’s the Labour-supporting, Welsh-hating, Trinity Mirror Group that provides you with a platform for your BritNat bigotry.

P.S. I’m informed that Ruck’s latest column, on the 14th, was used to attack Welsh language education. Why does anyone buy a rag from Trinity Mirror?

♦

THOSE LEAFLETS

Now let’s turn to others who share Ruck’s attitude to the Welsh language, I’m talking now of those connected with Tales With a Twist.

Thanks to the Electoral Commission I now know that distributing election material lacking an imprint is not an offence; the offence lies in publishing and printing election material without an imprint. But of course, without an imprint, it’s very, very difficult to prove who wrote and printed the document being distributed. Something of a Catch-22 situation.

Which is why I asked the Electoral Commission to give me examples of successful prosecutions for not having an imprint. The response was: ” . . . where the material is a newspaper advertisement we can contact the newspaper for the details of the person who placed the advertisement.” Obviously, but with the best will in the world, someone would have to be really, really stupid to put election material that lacked an imprint in a newspaper advertisement. And would a newspaper accept such an advertisement, knowing that it broke the law?

click to enlarge

Though one possibility intrigues me. What if I was to write and run off a few hundred copies of a leaflet ahead of the next general election, a leaflet claiming that the local Labour candidate attends the same Penrhyndeudraeth coven as the Conservative candidate, where they romp around bollock naked, beating each other with riding crops – but the leaflets never left my house.

According to the Electoral Commission I would have committed an offence, even though no one would read what I’d written. Which is absurd, because what I’d written and printed could only influence electors if it was distributed, yet distributing unattributed election material is not an offence. Am I alone in thinking that the law has got this the wrong way round?

Anyway, things are moving, slowly. North Wales Police seem to be interested. I now have copies of issues 1 and 2 of Tales With a Twist, proving that we are dealing with a campaign rather than a one-off, and even though Councillor Louise Hughes has denied distributing the leaflets I have statements that a) confirm she was distributing them in Trawsfynydd on April 28, and b) that she gave copies to Steven Churchman, the Lib Dem councillor. Other statements are promised.

As for who printed the leaflets, well we all know who that was. What’s more, when I spoke with the DC in Caernarfon on Thursday afternoon we discussed the printer and yet neither of us needed to mention his name. He is – to quote Donald Rumsfeld – a known known.

I have a feeling this may not be over.

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PLAID CYMRU & THE SNP

Many of you reading this may get a warm glow from watching Leanne Wood hugging Nicola Sturgeon, but how realistic is it to compare Plaid Cymru with the Scottish National Party? I got to wondering how their results since the first elections to the devolved bodies in 1999 compared.

In 1999 Plaid did marginally better than the SNP; point three of a percentage point lower in the constituency vote but over three percentage points higher in the regional/list vote. A good showing.

In 2003 both parties lost support. Plaid Cymru’s performance can be largely attributed to the palace coup that removed Dafydd Wigley, Plaid’s most popular ever leader. The fall in support for the SNP is due to a number of factors, certainly a change of leader also played a part, though most would agree that John Swinney was a more inspiring replacement for Alex Salmond than Ieuan Wyn Jones was for Dafydd Wigley.

The picture in Scotland was further complicated by what could be explained, perhaps paradoxically, as a falling off in support for the SNP, but the electorate still returned more MSPs in favour of independence.

For while the SNP lost 8 seats in 2003 the Scottish Greens gained 6 seats and Tommy Sheridan’s Scottish Socialists increased their tally by 5. Which meant that there were 40 MSPs (out of 129) supporting independence after the 2003 election against 37 in 1999.

When we move on to 2007 we see the gulf opening. Plaid Cymru improves marginally on 2003 but nothing like the increase that was expected with an unpopular Labour government in Westminster, whereas the SNP’s support increased by almost 50% to make it the largest party.

The election of 2011 is remarkable in that, in Wales, with the Tories now in power in London, many Welsh voters were persuaded to ‘send a message to Lundun, innit’ by voting Labour. By comparison, in Scotland, a Tory government in London did nothing for Labour as the SNP romped home with a majority of the seats.

Most recently, in 2016, the SNP may have lost six seats (and its majority) but in terms of votes there was a fall of only 2.3% in the regional share but an increase of 1.1% in the constituency vote. Add in the two Scottish Green representatives and there is still a pro-independence majority of 65 MSPs in Holyrood.

Here in Wales, Plaid Cymru may have improved on its dismal performance in 2011 (if it hadn’t, then it might have been time to call it a day), partly due to having a new leader in Leanne Wood, but still got less than half the SNP’s share of the vote, leaving the 1999 result looking like a lost golden age.

In Scotland, the issue for a decade or more, and the issue still dominating political debate, is independence. Here in Wales we have a ‘national’ party that would prefer not to debate independence (or colonisation, or exploitation, or anything that might upset or annoy anyone), a party that is bumping along the bottom and going nowhere.

You know my view, I gave up on Plaid Cymru years ago. With Wales falling apart around us, suffering attacks from all quarters, how much longer can you continue supporting a party going nowhere, a party that will sabotage itself if there’s any possibility of success? (Believe me, it will!)

(You’ll notice that I’ve spared Plaid Cymru’s embarrassment by sticking with the devolved vote, not comparing the relative showings for Westminster elections, in which Plaid does even worse.)

♦

MONKTON

In the interests of clarity this whole section was re-written 17.07.2017

WHAT WE KNOW

There were unpleasant scenes in Monkton, Pembrokeshire, on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning last week when a crowd gathered to protest about a paedophile the crowd believed was living at Gwilliam Court. As is invariably the case in such incidents the crowd included some seeking an excuse for trouble, these being responsible for allegedly setting bins on fire, letting down the tyres on police vehicles and other mischief.

Despite the behaviour of these idiots there was a genuine cause for concern, for the woman allegedly living in Gwilliam Court was identified (though not named) by both the Sun and the Daily Mail as Amber Roderick. Her record would cause any parent to worry about her presence on their estate. And yet there are so many questions about the whole business.

On the assumption that we are dealing with Roderick let’s look at her most recent conviction, at Reading Crown Court in January 2012. As the Crown Prosecution Service summary tells us, she was jailed for a minimum of four years and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register. This NACRO document tells us that anyone imprisoned for 30 months or more stays on the register “indefinitely”.

THE AFTERMATH

It became clear from police and council statements that if it was Roderick – now going by the name of Bridget McGinley – then she was not the tenant of the property in Monkton, the tenant being a man with whom she was co-habiting.

But then, to confuse matters, in this report from the Pembrokeshire Herald Superintendent Ian John of Dyfed Powys Police, says, “The two residents of that flat, as it stands, neither of those two people, were actually currently on the sex offender’s register. The facts are, they were not on the sex offender’s register. It would be inappropriate for me to go into specific detail, but what I will say, the lady who moved in with the gentleman who is the tenant of the flat, was not required to record her movements, as she would have been if she was on the sex offenders register.”

Superintendent John’s convoluted statement suggests three options. 1/ Somebody made a terrible mistake, stirring up a mob when it was not Amber Roderick/Bridget McGinley in that flat, 2/ If it was her, then she has somehow been taken off the Sex Offenders’ Register, 3/ Superintendent John is mistaken.

Also quoted in the Pembrokeshire Herald report is ‘Annalee’ who seems to suggest that in Wales offenders remain on the Sex Offenders Register for only five years, with the clear implication that in Scotland and England the period is longer. Is this true?

Well, after consulting the NACRO document again I believe that in the case that ‘Annalee’ refers to, the age of the offender, and the sentence handed down, meant that he stayed on the register for only five years. And it would have been the same in England. (I can’t speak for Scotland.)

Something else that struck people about the Herald report was local councillor Pearl Llewellyn saying, “I was told by Pembrokeshire County Council not to get involved or to come to these meetings, but I have, because my daughter lived in Monkton.” But she’s the elected representative of these people! Why would the council – and what does she mean by “the council”? – tell her not to get involved?

CONCLUSIONS

There are obviously questions to answer, not least – who owns the property in question; is it Pembrokeshire County Council or Pembrokeshire Housing Association? Or is it perhaps a third party, a private landlord, or even an offshore entity leasing property to social landlords, such as I exposed in Link Holdings (Gibraltar) Ltd?

Someone with whom I’m in contact is having great difficulty getting an answer to that simple question from Pembrokeshire County Council.

In the original version of this section I quoted the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 70 (1) (j) which says that sex offenders and others coming out of prison get preferential treatment in the allocation of social housing.

I was pulled up and pointed to the preamble reading, “a person who has a local connection with the area of the local housing authority . . . “. This is not worth the paper it’s printed on. After years of studying the operations of social landlords I know that no ‘local connection’ is needed to be housed by social landlords in Wales.

If the Llansiadwel Housing Association is offered two or three times the normal rate to house a paedophile from Newcastle who’s never set foot in Wales they’ll jump at it.

To understand the truth of what I’m saying you only have to consider the case in Monkton. If it was Roderick/McGinley living there, then it’s reasonable to assume that the tenant was the boyfriend identified in Reading Crown Court as Patrick Maughan and sentenced to six years in prison at the same trial. Both could have been recently released, and neither has a local connection to Pembrokeshire.

As I say, there are just so many questions. The best way to clear things up, to placate the residents of Monkton, and to restore faith in the council, is for both the council and the police to come clean and give the full details of this case.

Also, for social housing providers and other agencies to stop dumping undesirables from England in Wales, no matter what financial and other incentives are offered.

In which I try to explain how Plaid Cymru became a serious political party in the 1960s, why it was derailed in the 1980 and 1990s, and how we’ve ended up with a self-emasculating party that sees no role for itself other than as Labour’s little helper.

BLOWN INTO THE LIMELIGHT

I can write about the 1960s with some authority because I was there, I was involved, and I knew many of the players. Most weekends would see a gang of us pile into a hired transit van to attend some rally or protest, and there were real issues for us to focus on; we had Tryweryn (plus the other drownings), Aberfan, the Investiture – how could anyone not believe that Wales would be better off if she was independent?

There was a widespread perception among those I mixed with of there being a broad nationalist front, with Plaid Cymru as the political wing. Many people I knew were members of both Plaid and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society), I even knew people who were members of Plaid, CyIG and the Free Wales Army. There was most definitely ‘overlap’.

Though Plaid’s leadership, Gwynfor Evans especially, attributed the bombing campaigns to MI5 and sought to distance the party from them. Whatever the response, the truth is that in the 1960s Plaid Cymru rode the coat-tails of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru and the FWA to became a serious political party, winning Carmarthen in the 1966 by-election and pushing Labour close in subsequent by-elections in the Valleys.

‘That Charles is a lovely boy, Mam . . . I think I’m in love!’

The lesson was clear, get the people to focus on Welsh issues, particularly exploitation and injustice, and Plaid Cymru would reap the electoral reward. Without the reaction to Tryweryn and the protests of Cymdeithas yr Iaith, it’s unlikely that Gwynfor Evans would have beaten Gwilym Prys-Davies in Carmarthen. And Gwynfor’s victory in July 1966 is often cited as the inspiration for Winnie Ewing winning the Hamilton by-election for the SNP in November 1967. Can we go so far as to attribute the impending independence of Scotland to the greed and insensitivity of Liverpool Corporation?

Plaid Cymru’s leaders don’t like being told that the party owes its boost in the 1960s to Owain Williams, John Jenkins and Cayo Evans, but the party certainly lost impetus when MAC and the FWA were broken up. With little to excite and involve the voters Plaid Cymru’s support in the 1970s fell back in the south, but the party entrenched itself in the west and the north, appealing primarily now to Welsh speakers, a trend that damaged its appeal outside the Fro Gymraeg.

Again, I speak from personal experience, having stood as a Plaid Cymru candidate for both Swansea city council and West Glamorgan county council in the mid 1970s. I’d knock on a door, introduce myself as one of the local Plaid Cymru candidates and often get the response, ‘Sorry, love, we don’t speak Welsh’. There was rarely hostility, more the feeling that whatever Plaid Cymru might be (and few knew, or cared), it was definitely a party for Welsh speakers only. Plaid Cymru in the 1970s and 1980s was a national party with a very narrow appeal just bumbling aimlessly along.

♦

PLAID GOES LEFT, AND GREEN, AND DISAPPEARS UP ITS OWN ARSE

Nineteen-seventy-nine was a significant year in Wales for three main reasons.

On March 1st, St David’s Day, Wales rejected the Labour Party’s devolution proposals, with just 20.26% in support. Despite it being a Labour initiative most Labour politicians, led by Neil Kinnock and George Thomas, campaigned vigorously and viciously against devolution.

Then on May 3rd Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives were elected to power in Westminster, with the party gaining 32.2% of the Welsh vote and eleven of the thirty-six Welsh seats. In the general election of 1983 – and despite the war in the south Atlantic and the losses suffered by the Welsh Guards on the Sir Galahad – the Tories still gained 32% of the Welsh vote. From a high point of 11.5% in the general election of 1970 Plaid Cymru’s share of the vote slipped to 8.1% in 1979 and 7.8% in 1983.

Finally, on December 11th, we saw the first holiday home arson attacks by Meibion Glyndŵr.

Plaid Cymru continued to bumble along, going nowhere. The party was so rudderless, so unattractive to voters outside of the rural west, that the MG campaign was unable to give the boost that MAC and the FWA had done in the 1960s, possibly because holiday homes were not an issue in the areas where Plaid needed to grow. Plaid Cymru was a weak party of dispirited members, ripe for change, or takeover . . . preferably not a takeover by nationalists.

Gwynfor Evans stepped down as president in 1981 and a new generation stepped into his shoes. First, Dafydd Wigley, who’d been elected MP for Caernarfon in 1974, and then, more significantly, from 1984, Dafydd Elis Thomas, who’d been elected in the same year for the neighbouring constituency of Meirionnydd.

Now things begin to get strange. Because although the obvious problem was that Plaid Cymru was not getting enough support from the anglophone Welsh, under Dafydd Elis Thomas the party started reaching out in other directions, primarily to the hairier fringes of the Left, and to even more hirsute elements of the environmental movement. It will be noted that none of these new ‘allies’ had a snowball’s chance in hell of increasing Plaid’s vote in Swansea East or Merthyr or Wrecsam.

Another in Plaid’s hierarchy keen on ‘reaching out’ was Cynog Dafis, who believed there was common ground between Plaid Cymru and the Greens. These Greens were of course overwhelmingly English and many of them were openly dismissive of Welsh identity. As far as they were concerned, they had moved to ‘the country’, not to someone else’s country.

The Plaid-Green Summer Solstice Conference, Pontrhydfendigaid, 1991

This contempt was returned in kind, for most Plaid Cymru supporters had no time for the Greens, and some, especially those involved in farming and other activities, thoroughly detested these arrogant interlopers who threatened their livelihoods. Yet to Cynog Dafis the hippies and the rest were “those who had moved here to live for progressive and enlightened purposes”.

This episode provides us with an example from thirty years ago of Plaid Cymru’s leadership being out of step with the party’s rank and file, and of course the wider population. Guilty of going off on tangents that did nothing to address Plaid Cymru’s fundamental problem. I wrote a few years ago about this rather silly flirtation with the Greens in Plaid Cymru and the Green Party of Englandandwales.

♦

AN AMERICAN FRIEND

When he was Plaid’s head honcho Dafydd El’s consort was an American named Marjorie Thompson. An interesting woman from an impeccably WASP-Republican background who, after a stint as assistant to a Republican Congressman, crossed the Pond and soon joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, rising to be chair of that body. More remarkably, perhaps, she also served as chair of Scottish CND, though this is not mentioned in her Linkedin profile.

I’m not sure when her relationship with DET began but it lasted some seven years and intrigued observers. Having served her time among the ‘progressives’ in CND and other groups Ms Thompson eventually joined Saatchi & Saatchi, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite ad agency, in 1997, and returned ‘home’, as it were, by joining the Conservative Party in 2009.

I seem to recall that there was interest at the time in a brother of Marjorie Ellis Thompson who, it was alleged, worked for a US intelligence agency. But I could be mistaken, it was all a long time ago. Maybe someone remembers?

By 1992, after all the changes, and all the ‘reaching out’, Plaid Cymru’s percentage of the vote in that year’s general election barely moved. Nevertheless, the party did hold its three seats in the north west and Cynog Dafis added Ceredigion and Pembroke North, almost certainly due to the thousands of bearded ones turning out to vote for him.

Though the only constituency that saw an official Plaid-Green alliance was Monmouth, where the candidate Mel Witherden got 0.8% of the vote, the lowest Plaid vote in the country. Witherden was quite open in stating that many Greens were anti-Welsh in a racist and colonialist way.

Plaid was now firmly located on the political left, it was a ‘welcoming’ party concerned with all manner of ishoos and -isms, and more interested in the opinions of Islington than with what people were thinking in Islwyn.

♦

DESIGNED TO FAIL

Plaid Cymru, the party I joined in the mid-’60s because it – and I – wanted to make Wales a better place for the Welsh people, had become a regional rainbow alliance for which nationhood and independence were dirty words. Wales no longer mattered except for the votes and seats it provided that then allowed the Plaid leadership to rub shoulders with other ‘progressives’.

This party had no chance of winning seats outside of the Welsh-speaking areas, where most of Plaid’s voters supported the party for cultural reasons, and didn’t really care about Plaid’s policies (even if they knew what they were). If this electorate had one concern it was the influx that was breaking up communities and slowly destroying a Welsh way of life.

Plaid Cymru had no intention of making a stand against colonisation; in fact, as we’ve seen, Plaid’s leadership was happy to co-operate with elements of this influx. Never was an electorate taken for granted and treated with such contempt as Plaid Cymru’s rural voters. It’s no exaggeration to say that Meibion Glyndŵr spoke for these people better than Plaid Cymru.

Courtesy of BBC

Plaid Cymru was successfully subverted in the late 1980s and early 1990s into a political party that would never get more than 10-12% of the vote in UK general elections and therefore pose no threat to the integrity of the UK state. It would have been easy to interpret this catastrophic re-alignment to foolishness, were it not for the removal of Dafydd Wigley in 2000.

In the first elections to the new Welsh Assembly in May 1999 Plaid Cymru gained 28.4% of the constituency vote (Labour 37.6%) and 30.5% of the second or regional vote (Labour 35.4%). In addition to predictably winning its western, rural seats the party also won Llanelli, Rhondda and Islwyn. This result sent shock waves way beyond Wales.

In June 2000 an internal plot removed Dafydd Wigley, persuading him to cite health grounds for ‘his’ decision. Seventeen years later he leads a full life travelling up to London regularly to sit in the House of Lords and is actively involved in many other, more worthwhile, activities.

♦

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

In my previous post I wrote of the strange case of Plaid Cymru councillor and AM Neil McEvoy, stitched up on a ludicrous ‘bullying’ charge by the Labour corruption machine and then, instead of being supported by his party, he found Plaid’s leadership siding with Labour and assorted organisations on Labour’s Third Sector payroll such as Welsh Women’s Aid.

In that post – and if you haven’t read it then I urge you to do so – I talked of the ‘consensus’, a delusion prevalent among Plaid Cymru’s hierarchy that they and ‘Welsh’ Labour are natural allies in the fight against the forces of darkness. This results in Plaid Cymru refusing to take Labour on in the way that the SNP has so successfully done in Scotland. But it goes deeper than that, and it’s more sinister.

Like all advanced states, the UK has a ‘permanent government’ which may or may not be made up of military brass, top businessmen, intelligence chiefs, senior civil servants and others. Whatever their attitude towards the Labour Party – and this will vary depending on who’s leading Labour – they understand full well that Labour is the bulwark against Welsh nationalism simply because it’s the largest party in Wales.

Equally, those I’m talking about understand that due to its corruption and incompetence, and the quality of its elected representatives, Labour in Wales is highly vulnerable, and must therefore be protected from any threat to its hegemony. The best way of doing this is from within. From within Plaid Cymru.

It’s no coincidence that Dafydd Wigley, Plaid Cymru’s most successful ever leader, was removed when the party he led threatened to dislodge Labour in the Valleys. And no coincidence that it was done with a palace coup.

Now Neil McEvoy, a politician from a different mould to most other Plaid MPs and AMs, is gaining popularity in working class Cardiff, so he is stitched up by Labour and hung out to dry by his own party.

To achieve this control over Plaid Cymru the permanent government doesn’t need many on the inside, just enough, in senior positions, to ensure that the right kind of left-liberal losers are recruited and promoted, and that nationalists, or anyone threatening Labour’s domination, is sidelined.

♦

THE DOG IN THE MANGER

Since the Neil McEvoy affair blew up I have spoken with people I know inside Plaid Cymru and they are surprised, annoyed or outraged by the actions of the party leadership. No one I have spoken to supports the party leadership. The confusion extended to surprising quarters, like Martin Shipton in the Wasting Mule. Plaid’s leadership must know that they’ve got this one badly wrong.

But then, this is exactly how Plaid Cymru has been programmed to react in a situation like this. As I said earlier, Plaid Cymru was “subverted in the late 1980s and early 1990s into a political party that would never get more than 10-12% of the vote in UK general elections”, achieved by the simple expedient of taking the party in directions that made it unattractive to the great majority of Welsh voters.

Update that figure for devolution and we are talking of less than 25% in Assembly elections. Anything higher sets the alarm bells ringing in the marbled corridors of the permanent government. And action is taken.

Plaid Cymru since the bright young things took control has been a party promising everything to everybody . . . and delivering nothing, apart from minor concessions allowed by our masters to delude the rank and file that their leaders can deliver, and that the long-heralded ‘breakthrough’ is just around the corner. The ‘breakthrough’ that never comes . . . and was scuppered from within when it threatened to happen.

But perhaps Plaid Cymru’s most useful role has been as a dog in the manger party, because for as long as Plaid is in place, gaining just enough votes, it blocks the emergence of an alternative that could confront and defeat ‘Welsh’ Labour.

♦

MY MESSAGE TO PLAID CYMRU MEMBERS

Whether you accept my theory or not, you know that your party is going nowhere. Which means that you are probably confused or disappointed by the treatment of Neil McEvoy, your party’s most effective politician.

You know that ‘Welsh’ Labour is there for the taking – so why is Plaid Cymru propping up this stumblebum party?

Or ask yourself why your party is so unattractive that Ukip got more votes in the last general election. And not just in Clwyd, but in Blaenau Gwent, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhymni, Swansea East, etc. Come on! wise up!

My belief remains that Plaid Cymru has been compromised. For appearances’ sake, and to block the emergence of a credible alternative, it is allowed a certain level of support, in return for which it must deal with anyone threatening to upset the status quo.

To make Plaid Cymru the party it should be, the party most of you want it to be, you need to give our people the message of hope they want to hear. But to achieve this you must remove the deadwood at the top of the party.

Plaid Cymru needs a new leadership prepared to put the interests of Wales and the Welsh people first, no matter what other parties, the commentariat, or the ‘progressives’ of Islington, may say.

I went to the Tryweryn commemoration on Saturday. (I wouldn’t have bothered, but two old friends came up, stayed with me Friday night, and so I went with them.) There was a good crowd there, but not many young people; though in fairness, I suppose an event like that was always going to attract what’s left of the Sixties generation. (God! am I that old!)

There seemed to be a great many, er, mature women there, with the uniforms and hairstyles of their age and class. Many of these had been sparky young things in mini skirts back in the 1960s, and had marched with placards held aloft before, rebelliousness spent, settling down to become Miss Pugh of Nantiestyn Juniors, and stalwart of Merched y Wawr.

So it should come as no surprise to learn that the Tryweryn commemoration was exclusively a Plaid Cymru affair, which meant that the small number of ‘militants’ that turned up was massively outnumbered, though of course some were in mufti, while other firebrands of yore – like the aforementioned ladies – have turned quite respectable. In fact, there was a rather parchus – almost bourgeois – overlay to the whole thing. I swear anybody who’d farted would have been stared down into the murky waters covering Capel Celyn.

This parchus overlay might have influenced the pervading air of elegiac nostalgia. There was a lot of hand-wringing and reminiscing, nostalgia for a lost bucolic paradise; but little to dissuade me from believing that the only reason we haven’t seen another Tryweryn is the fear – on the part of the British state – of unleashing forces more threatening to English colonialism than Plaid Cymru.

Speeches were delivered by former Plaid leader Dafydd Wigley, 60s protest singer and politician Dafydd Iwan (who also gave us a couple of songs), former and current MPs for Meirionnydd Elfyn Llwyd and Liz Saville Roberts, with it all compered, rather well, by councillor Elwyn Edwards, a native of drowned Capel Celyn.

Absent was Plaid’s current leader, Leanne Wood, up at the SNP conference in Aberdeen getting the kind of reception she can only dream of in Wales and, much more surprisingly, the man who’s been the local AM since the Assembly started, Dafydd Elis Thomas.

As I say, there was a curious atmosphere hanging over the whole event, as if no one was quite sure how to deal with celebrating what was obviously a defeat for Wales but which turned out to be one poke in the eye too many even for a defeated and complaisant people like us.

This strange and uncertain mood became even more obvious at the anti-climatic conclusion. Speeches over . . . and that was it . . . no singing of the anthem, no Yma o Hyd from Dafydd Iwan, just people milling around wondering what to do next. As it turned out, we were told to line up behind the ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn‘ banner and march back to the car park on other side of the dam.

I remarked to a local freelance photographer I knew that the crowd marching silently over the dam looked more like the type of procession one sees in Catholic countries than anything political. And I suppose it was a kind of pilgrimage, but many there were not sure exactly what they were supposed to be commemorating. Or how they were supposed to commemorate it.

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MORE ON ‘HAPPY DONKEY HILL’

In the previous post I referred to the property known as Faerdre Fach near Llandysul being re-named Happy Donkey Hill. I have since been passed information that throws more light on the woman responsible for this insult.

It seems that the proprietrix of Happy Donkey Hill is named Kate Clamp, and she’s into ‘animal welfare’, as this report from the Northern Echo (of Newcastle) tells us. Though this 2008 article also tells us that she was forced to give up the Ramshaw Rescue Centre at Low Garth Farm because of a neck injury. Mercifully she recovered well enough to bring herself to Wales and buy Faerdre Fach, which she re-named Happy Donkey Hill.

After moving to Llandysul Kate Clamp branched out into B&B and other holiday accommodation. Not only that but she tried to advertise her new venture with this appearance on Channel 4’s Four in a Bed, a show in which B&B owners visit and assess each other’s establishments (not what you’re thinking!). In part excruciating, in part embarrassing, this example of ‘Welsh’ tourism should chill the heart of any true Welsh person.

Clearly, the multi-chinned Ms Clamp sees herself as one of those big and bubbly ‘personalities’ we are all expected to cherish. Anyone who doesn’t accept this depiction is often dismissed as a ‘snob’. A less generous interpretation might be that she’s a loud and domineering woman more concerned with animals than people. With the latter being used to fund her concern for – even preference for – the former. (It may be significant that visitors to Happy Donkey Hill can bring their dogs but not their children.)

I trust that the required planning permissions have been received for all the changes she and her young partner are making to Faerdre Fach Happy Donkey Hill, and that the RSPCA is keeping check on the welfare of the assorted animals there, for Kate Clamp is a very busy woman. (And it must be worth asking, ‘How many more animal ‘refuges’ are we going to allow?) Another concern should be for public health inspectors, for I’d be concerned about so many animals in close proximity to where food is cooked and people sleep.

But at the end of the day, this is ‘Welsh’ tourism. Crude and alien. The time has surely come to curb the excesses of this exploitive and colonialist activity; for tourism, and the colonisation that comes with it, are now the biggest threats to the survival of Welsh identity, the Welsh language, and even Welsh place names, in our rural areas.

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LEGISLATING FOR GOOD-LIFERS

Back in January last year I wrote a piece about the ‘Welsh’ Government transferring 15% of EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funding from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2. (Read it here.) In other words, instead of this money going to Welsh farmers it would in future be given to ‘rural development projects’. (I think most people reading this will understand the code employed in ‘rural development projects’.) There have been many other assaults on Welsh agriculture recently. Here’s one I noticed in January this year.

On the one hand it would be easy to dismiss these attacks on farming as the behaviour of a political party whose ‘Wales’ is bounded by Llanelli, Ebbw Vale and Coedpoeth. Reasoning that, ‘Them buggers don’t vote for us so why should we do anything for them?’ But this argument doesn’t hold water because even areas that do vote Labour also get shafted. (Just think Valleys.)

One reason for these constant assaults on Welsh rural life is the advice received by the ‘Welsh’ Government in recent years from bodies such as the Wales Rural Observatory (WRO), which I wrote about back in September 2012. (I apologise for the lack of spacing, due to the formatting not transferring properly from my old Google Blogger blog.) Though since writing that piece I understand that the WRO may have had its funding pulled . . . I do hope it was something I said.

By a rather roundabout route I was recently made aware of yet more ludicrous advice being fed to the ‘Welsh’ Government, advice that, yet again, works against Welsh interests and also encourages further colonisation. I’m referring now to the ‘Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities’, set out in Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6 as ‘One Planet Development’. You will note that this was ‘prepared’ for the Planning Division of the ‘Welsh’ Government by Land Use Consultants and the Positive Development Trust. Although the address given for this lot on TAN 6 is in Bristol, their head office is in fact in London, so I presume that Bristol is the regional office for this part of Englandandwales.

I urge you to read TAN 6, especially if you want to expand your eco-babble vocabulary.

To cut a long story short, the civil servants who run the ‘Welsh’ Government’s Planning Department have accepted this guidance and imposed it on our local planning authorities. It demands that our local authorities give planning permission to projects meeting the criterion of ‘self-sufficiency’. The panel below is taken from TAN 6 and tells us that this directive does not merely apply to single properties, it can be used to build whole new ‘ecovillages’.

The specific example I read about was in Carmarthenshire, planned for Rhiw Las, near Whitland. (Read more here.) While the source, West Wales News Review, is obviously published by environmentalists, it has some use in that it provides us with the name of Rhiw Las Ltd, Company Number, 08686077, Incorporated in September 2013. Rhiw Las Ltd has applied for what are, essentially, four new dwellings in open country, justified on the grounds that they will be self-sufficient smallholdings of the kind demanded by the One Planet legislation. (Read the planning application here.)

It was good to see Plaid Cymru (and other) councillors on Carmarthenshire council reject this application, but we can be sure of two things: 1/ The application will be allowed by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal, and 2/ No matter what the local councillors may think of it, Plaid AMs would have been falling over themselves to support this One Planet eco-bollocks.

The legislation set out in TAN 6 could result in whole new villages of hippies and other undesirables setting up anywhere in Wales. In fact, TAN 6 encourages it. All they’d need to do is form a small company, buy a bit of land (I’m sure the ‘Welsh’ Government will help) and whack in a planning application. It’s frightening to think that a government supposedly serving Welsh interests is agreeing to legislation like this. For no matter that this colonisation ploy originated in England, no matter that is was taken up and presented by the English civil servants controlling the Assembly, it still had to be agreed by those traitorous buffoons down Cardiff docks.

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Everywhere we look in rural Wales, and along our coasts, we see the same picture – Welsh identity being swamped under a tide of colonisation. Worse, the ‘Welsh’ Government is facilitating this ethnic cleansing by legislating against the indigenous Welsh and passing laws that can only benefit strangers. Also, by encouraging activities and industries that are guaranteed to work against Welsh interests.

We Welsh today are a nation without leaders or representatives, those we have put our faith in have betrayed us time and time again. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a monoglot socialist agitator in Dowlais or a lover of the Welsh language in Dolgellau, you have been taken for granted and betrayed, time after time!

This system will eventually turn Wales into a larger version of Cornwall, with impoverished natives being told to rejoice as wealthy outsiders buy everything – for this is ‘investment’, this is ‘progress’. Only a ‘racist’ would fight against his people being marginalised and their identity destroyed in this way.

But ‘racist’ is just another convenient lie for politicians and media, it’s just another smear; like the ‘terrorists’ who fought to free their countries from English oppression. How can these ingrates, these scoundrels, be compared to the visionaries who set up the first concentration camps, the lauded commanders who took the decision to bomb Dresden, or our noble allies in Saudi Arabia – ideal human rights watchdogs!

With devolution we Welsh are confronted with the colonial appendage of a morally bankrupt system. As such, it deserves neither our respect nor our support. So start rejecting it, treat it with the contempt it deserves. Start today!

UPDATE: As I predicted, the English Planning Inspectorate overruled Carmarthenshire County Council to give these colonists planning permission for their hippy settlement. Not only that but the Inspector decided that the council should pay the colonists’ costs in preparing their appeal. No doubt we Welsh will be paying for lots of other things for these bastards in the years ahead because the ‘self-sufficiency’ they’re always banging on about never leads to them being independent of the public purse.

I bought the Sunday Telegraph today and read Andrew Gilligan’s piece on the SNP conference in Perth. In fairness, Gilligan conceded that, “Fiscally, there is no question that an independent Scotland could afford to go it alone”, which, I suppose, is progress. Because it wasn’t so long ago that Unionists like him were insisting an independent Scotland would be a pauper state. However, the rest of the piece was the usual combination of slapstick and scaremongering.

By line five of the article the respected leader of the SNP had become “Tubby” Salmond, a condition he was trying to remedy with a diet devised for him by, wait for it! – an Englishman. I found myself asking, ‘Is the dietician’s nationality important?’ and the only answer I could come up with was ‘no’. Maybe it was all too subtle for me, and this was Gilligan’s way of telling us that the Scots need their benevolent neighbours to look after them.

Gilligan introduced more humour (but unintentionally, this time) by reminding us that Scotland’s only oil refinery, at Grangemouth, had suddenly been closed by “its Swiss-based multinational owners” leaving the prospect that Scottish oil “would have to come ashore in England” with all the revenue and other implications for Scotland. Plus the more immediate possibility of fuel shortages in Scotland. Possibilities that may have had Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells salivating over his kedgeree this morning, but if you think about it, then the very idea is silly. An independent Scotland could either buy or take over Grangemouth, or just build a new refinery.

Gilligan conceded though that whatever was happening at Grangemouth looked like a “cooked-up dispute” over pay and conditions. Half true (as he may have known). The dispute is definitely contrived, but the pay and conditions angle is a red herring and a pretext. It might help if we look at exactly who owns Grangemouth refinery. The company is called INEOS which as Gilligan says, is headquartered in Switzerland, but he neglected to tell us that its registered office is in the canton of Hampshire. The company was founded by the very unSwiss sounding Jim Ratcliffe, and the only others mentioned in the ‘Leadership’ section of the website are, Andy Currie, John Reece and Jim Dawson. So, while INEOS might operate in many countries it is most definitely an English company.

What we appear to have here, then, is an English company playing politics and possibly trying to influence next September’s independence referendum. With oil figuring so large in an independent Scotland’s projected finances INEOS could be saying, ‘And how are you going to get the oil ashore without the Grangemouth facilities – that we own?’ If so, then the only question remaining for me is whether the UK government, or any of its agencies, put INEOS up to this stunt, and perhaps even agreed to underwrite the company’s losses. With your money.

Now there will be many reading this who’ll dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist. If I am, it’s because there are a lot of nasty things going on out there, and some of the worst of them are done by loveable, fluffy democracies that spend so much time castigating regimes that are more openly corrupt and repressive. This, added to a certain experience of how the bastards operate, leads me to confidently predict that between now and the Scottish referendum we shall be entertained with dirty tricks, black propaganda and downright lies that would make a propaganda chief in a totalitarian regime blush with embarrassment.

What am I talking about? Well, let me give you one of my favourite examples. What comes into your head when you think of Cananda? Wide open spaces, Mounties . . . not a lot really; truth is, Canada comes over as dull and boring – ah, yes! but a model democracy, surely? Well, yes, until that is the Frenchies start being awkward, then the Canadian federal government, helped by big business, media and Uncle Sam pulls out all the stops to frighten the Quebecois into rejecting independence and / or parties promoting independence.

We’ve all heard the ‘money will flood out of the country’ argument against independence. Well in 1970 it was played out on the streets of Montreal, in what French speakers call a coup de theatre, and in this case, ‘le coup de la Brink’s‘. (Link to article in French. Difficult to find anything in English on this incident. Hardly surprising.) On April 26th, in the hope of deterring people from voting for the Parti quebecois in the upcoming election for the Quebec parliament the Royal Bank of Cananda – on the instructions of the federal government – sent a convoy of nine Brink’s armoured cars to Montreal where they were loaded with bonds and securities before heading off to Toronto.

Maybe it worked. Certainly the PQ vote was not as high as had been expected, or feared. Further, given the skewed electoral system then operating in Quebec the PQ got just seven seats despite winning over 23% of the vote. (Still think Canada is an ideal democracy?)

You want a Welsh example of underhand behaviour by a government? OK, try this. At the first Assembly elections in 1999, under the leadership of Dafydd Wigley, Plaid Cymru came very close to getting more votes and more seats than Labour. There was, understandably, panic within Labour ranks, so the Labour government in London had words with its friends in the media. One result was the arrival of the Welsh Mirror newspaper, nothing more than the English Daily Mirror with articles slagging off Plaid Cymru and regular scare stories and borderline racism from Paul Starling, who also wrote for the New Statesman. Soon Dafydd Wigley was removed, Labour came back strongly in the elections of 2003, the Welsh Mirror went back to being the Daily Mirror, and Paul Starling seemed to disappear.

Which is why I confidently predict that the Scottish referendum campaign will serve up a feast of dirty tricks, black propaganda, psycops and all the side dishes, maybe even some ‘false flag’ stunts. And if it looks like there’s going to be a Yes vote, then it’ll be a real blow-out. It should go without saying that the groaning board I anticipate will not be provisioned by the Yes campaign.